Only minutes ago, I picked up the ringing phone and said, “RESPONSE Agency, Steve Cuno.” Said a voice right back, “Yes, do you have any job openings?”

No “hello.” No “may I speak to the person in charge of…” No “how are you doing today, sir?”

I loved it.

I make cold calls myself, so, fair being fair, I accept calls from people who would sell to me. Besides, sometimes I find out they’re peddling something I want. But I have little patience for callers who waste my time trying to evade, misrepresent, or use tactical questions designed to embarrass me into staying on the line against my will. (Note: Said tactics don’t work on me. I am perfectly capable of hanging up unabashed.)

So I found this caller refreshing. I told her we had no openings at the moment, but complimented her on and thanked her for her directness. She lost nothing by cutting to the chase. Keeping me on the line would not have changed the answer, and only delayed her getting on with calling the next shop.

When I worked on the client side, I was at odds with our ad agency when it came to direct response marketing (DRM). They refused to consider, much less concede, that direct response involved knowledge and skills not to be found in the average branding agency, which included theirs.

Finally, they retained a token direct response consultant, assuring me that “direct response affects the execution, not the strategy.” After receiving his input, they resented it, ignored it, and then proceeded with what they would have done in the first place. I rewarded them by leaving them with the branding work while giving the DRM work to a group who knew what they were doing.

Why, for any kind of marketing, anyone would retain a shop that doesn’t understand basic DRM is beyond me, but that’s another subject. Today, since it continues to rear its ugly head, I want to address the claim that “direct response affects the execution, not the concept.”

Here are three examples: If you happen to know that demonstrations outsell comedy, you will save your funny stuff for the local comedy club’s open-mike night. If you know that subtlety is largely lost, you’ll concoct a concept that bonks people over the head with an unmistakable message. If you know that being memorable doesn’t ensure sales, you’ll design a concept that moves people to action, not one that encourages them to remember your name for the next time a pollster calls during dinner.

Years ago I worked for a company whose production method required a certain type of glue. I could find only one source. When I called to order four drums, the salesman said, “Sorry, the minimum order is five drums.” Fine, I said, I would take five. “Sorry,” he said, “we only have three drums in stock.” I said I’d take the three. “Sorry,” he said, “Minimum purchase is five.”

The story had two positive outcomes. One was that I had fun writing a letter of complaint, more humorous than angry, to the company’s national sales manager. The other was that the national sales manager immediately apologized and fixed the problem in a way that left me with a more positive impression of the company than the one I’d started out with.

From fake endorsements to Australia’s yucky cigarette boxesFirst-party-third-party endorsements — U.S. District Judge William Alsup is concerned that Google may have paid bloggers and commentators to opine, as if on their own, and thus influenced the outcome of its legal battle with Oracle Corporation. I do not defend the practice, but if that is indeed what Google did, it is not exactly new. Consider the tobacco industry’s having paid health experts to opine that smoking was not linked to cancer, or large oil concerns today who continue paying climate experts to refute anthropogenic global warming.

Room with a rue — A class action suit alleges that Orbitz, Expedia, Marriott, Hilton and others engaged in price fixing in order to prevent online marketers from selling rooms on the cheap. If the accusation holds, so much for those who say that regulation is needless because businesses have learned their lesson and understand that fair play is the most profitable course.

As for Apple’s record value — I suppose I need write no more than this line.

Direct mail spending in 2011 rose 3% over 2010 — Sure, direct mail costs more than the interactive media per person reached. But the latter cannot compete in terms of a personal wallop—provided you do your direct mail right. Apparently more marketers have begun figuring this out.

On Australia’s Plain Packaging Act (warning: pun ahead) — Australia’s Plain Packaging Act, which bans branded tobacco packaging, has just been upheld by that nation’s High Court. The act requires that tobacco and cigarettes be sold in plain green packages—no logos—adorned with yucky images of diseased internal organs, brought to you by smoking. The law attempts to rein in a dangerous product for which, given the number of addicts and the power of that addiction, an attempted outright ban would be ill-fated. Though I can’t speak for Australia, anti-smoking political rhetoric in the United States is a bit hypocritical. The U.S. relies heavily on tobacco taxes that addicts pay. A dramatic reduction in tobacco use in this country could reduce not just coughers but coffers.

About that contest you’re thinking of runningI get this question surprisingly often, so it’s high time I blogged about it

A word of advice if you plan to enter the names of people who buy your product in a drawing: Don’t. To do so is to run an illegal gambling or lottery scheme. The fines can be stiff and the publicity embarrassing.

If you want to hold a contest, see an attorney (which, most emphatically, I am not). Chances are you’ll be advised to say “no purchase necessary” and allow people to enter without having to spend, usually by sending a postcard or registering online. You’ll also want to publish official contest rules.

If you do those things right, the good news is that you’ll remove your promotion from the gambling arena. The bad news is that you’ll place it in the sweepstakes arena instead. Sweepstakes law comes with its own labyrinth of rules, so you should still consult an attorney. Look for one with sweepstakes experience. Otherwise you’ll end up paying someone to research the topic, and the advice you receive may be more theoretical than practical.

If you choose to proceed without an attorney (not recommended), at the very least study and adapt the practices of companies with enough of a track record that you can reasonably infer they know what they’re doing. Companies that run sweeps all the time like, say, McDonald’s may well have the legal ins and outs down to a science by now.

Alas, the preposition. Sometimes there’s nothing better to end a sentence with.

It is not a rule, only a tradition, that the end of a sentence is not the place to tack a preposition onto. The presumptive prohibition appears to have had its start in 1762, when clergyman Robert Lowth decided he didn’t like sentences that used prepositions to end with. In his A Short Introduction to English Grammar, Lowth opined that such was bad form. Pundits have ever since found final prepositions ideal for pouncing on.

Correct grammar is determined by usage, not by rule-makers. Even languages like French, which boast official rule-makers who delight in cranking out official rules, cannot escape that essential fact.

Consider, for a moment, how utterly nonsensical is the expression, Ain’t isn’t a word. I challenge you to read the definition of the word “word”* and then explain in what sense ain’t ain’t one.

—Steve Cuno

*From Wikipedia: “A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.”

About that dormant dish on your roof--Maybe I’m not the only one who gave up satellite (or cable) service for the likes of streaming via Apple TV, Netflix and YouTube. I get my news via radio and local digital broadcast stations. In the second quarter of this year, the pay-TV industry lost about 400,000 subscribers. I suspect they’d lose even more were it not for Dexter.

Is it the economy, or is it the tablets? Magazine sales in the United States fell almost 10 percent in the first half of this year. Subscriptions haven’t changed much; it’s newsstand sales that are down. I admit that even I have reached the point where I’d as soon read periodicals and books on my iPad as on paper, and, much as I enjoy seeing books line my shelf, the iPad makes lugging them irresistibly convenient. Maybe that’s why sales of the Kindle edition of my new book are keeping pace with hard-copy sales so far.

Not everyone’s sales are falling: Macy’s reports a 16-ish percent net income increase for its second quarter. They credit their commitment to tailoring merchandise to local markets. They may be mistaking correlation for causation, and in any event that’s not exactly a unique strategy, but either way, good for Macy’s. Let’s hope they’re a leading indicator.

In a 52-46 vote, the U.S. Senate rejected the proposed Cybersecurity Act sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).

The bill’s apparent objective was to shore up the nation’s electrical grid, financial networks, transportation system and other critical infrastructure.

Who knows. Had such a bill been in place a few weeks ago, maybe my Netflix service wouldn’t have been interrupted, so I’d have found out sooner how the movie ended.

Seriously, the stated objective is needful. Would this bill have done the trick? Beats me. (Perhaps readers who are familiar with its details would care to click ADD COMMENT and opine.) But I do know the smell of a non-argument, like this one from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “We all recognize the problem, that’s really not the issue here, it’s the matter that the Majority Leader has tried to steamroll a bill.” Er, um, fine, suppose he steamrolled. That’s not the question. Does or doesn’t the bill fill the need? If it does, quit whining about tactics and pass it. If it doesn’t, explain why and come up with something better.

To be fair, Republicans and the US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill was too stringent. Whereupon the sponsors rendered the proposed standards voluntary. Voluntary standards? I also know the smell of an oxymoron, not to mention wimpiness.

About four years ago, I wrote to an interesting and attractive woman I spied on Match.com. Early in our written communication, she said that she and her ex-husband had once joined and then left a polygamous cult.

My first thought was, “Whoa, that’s nutty.” My immediate second thought was, “Let’s be fair. I have done my share of nutty things, too.” The only question, I realized, was not who and what she was then, but who and what she is now.

We met for lunch and hit it off. We have been together since, except for a one-year hiatus, after which we both had the good sense and good fortune to get back together.

The more Joanne recounted the madness of her days in the polygamist cult, the more it sounded like book material. Yet I hesitated. The market seemed flooded with smarmy memoirs by piteous ex-polygamist wives. Did anyone really need one more?

Then we had an idea. Johnny Carson once defined humor as “pain plus time.” We decided to tell Joanne’s story with humor and sarcasm. What better way to expose cultish thinking, along with the abuses that are part of it?